Under federal indictment, Republican Representatives Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California are both heading back to Congress. Rep. Collins has been charged with insider trading for using his concurrent position as a director of a pharmaceutical company to tip off associates, including his son, about negative stock news before it became public.

Representative Hunter is facing a federal trial on charges of wire fraud and misusing campaign funds for unrelated travel sprees and personal luxuries (falsely describing some expenses as donations to veterans). Fittingly, in the eyes of progressives, these men were also the first two members of Congress in 2016 to support President Trump, a paragon of sleaze.

But the trend of corruption failing to dampen a candidate’s chances crossed party lines again this fall. Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who holds the distinction among this year’s indicted Congressmen of having beaten the charges against him thanks to a mistrial on bribery, is heading back to Washington as well.

Once upon a time in American politics, when the other party wasn’t considered so toxic that voting for them was a sin, some base voters would have held their noses and voted those incumbents out of office — in the name of cleaning house.

Instead, during a year in which anticorruption sentiment was supposedly high, base voters re-elected those three high-profile grifters — all of whom, in one form or another, committed a constitutional “betrayal of public trust.” In an overlooked but similar situation, a hard-line Republican, Ken Paxton, was narrowly re-elected Attorney General of Texas despite facing two felony securities fraud charges. Ethical concerns appear no match for cultural and partisan loyalties this cycle.

Recognizing the electoral loophole created by Americans’ hardening allegiances, both Mr. Hunter and Mr. Collins decided to continue campaigning and distract voters from their indictments with what many considered outright racist tactics. Mr. Collins argued in a widely shared ad — featuring his opponent speaking Korean — that his opponent’s election would mean “fewer jobs” for Americans and “more jobs for China and Korea.” His opponent’s wife is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Korea.

American history is littered with both corrupt and racist hacks who voters have sent to Washington despite their bad behavior. But there was a time in the age of ideological moderation when more of them paid a price.

In 2008, a veteran member of the Congressional Black Caucus, William Jefferson, ran for re-election with his trial on bribery charges mere months away. (The F.B.I. famously found $90,000 neatly hidden in his freezer.) Mr. Jefferson’s traditionally safe seat, anchored by the deep blue New Orleans metro area, was promptly ripped away by a moderate Republican.

And in 2006, the Republican George Allen, a former governor of Virginia and United States senator, lost his bid for re-election after he was caught calling an Indian-American who worked for his opponent’s campaign “macaca,” a dated but clearly derogatory term.

Considering how the current president launched his political career by questioning the citizenship of the first president of color — and has since called Mexicans crossing the border “rapists” who “infest our country,” African countries and Haiti “shitholes,” and protesting black athletes “sons of bitches” — the end of Allen’s political career looks quaint.

The Keating Five scandal of the eighties, which ended the political careers of three senators with a combined 81 years of experience in Washington, is perhaps the most famous example of politicians losing their careers over their abuse of power. Senators John McCain and John Glenn alone survived it. But even that scandal — centering around loyalty pledges to a legally troubled donor — seems completely old-fashioned by today’s standards, in which donor influence is unfettered and lobbyists write bills themselves as President Trump stuffs his cabinet with plutocrats overseeing their own industries.

Mr. Collins’s war chest was filled with donations from the pharmaceutical industry as he crafted and sponsored bills to benefit his own pharma company. In five years, Mr. Collins introduced or sponsored at least five bills to directly buttress the company’s bottom line, and thus his pockets.

Anticorruption legislation of the kind that would punish lawmakers trying to enrich themselves stands no chance with the Republican captain, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office. That leaves the 2020 elections as the next best shot. But the 2016 cycle — a period when the GOP surrendered its family and fiscal values for a philandering celebrity swindler and Democrats suddenly defended the state of money in politics when Hillary Clinton’s role in it was at hand — is a grim harbinger.

It was a presidential election home to many forces. Still, the most informally detectable, yet meaningful element was that while a majority disdained both candidates, a crucial crop of Americans shared more cultural affinities and frustrations with Mr. Trump. So, he won.

But if your cultural team winning remains the highest priority in politics, then America can’t count on corruption — even the outright illegal kind — to be a disqualification for office.

Justin Glawe is an investigative reporter. His newsletter, “Where Do We Go From Here,” is forthcoming.